Beverley services all our cabin lights while I get to grips with moving our stern light

Beverley and I had been out searching the internet, to buy a new light for the kitchen and a whole load of small switches so that we could service our existing lights. It took us some time to track down what we needed but in the end we bought:-

• Bavaria light - https://www.svb24.com/en/bavaria-led-interior-dome-light.html
• Light components from http://www.primelight.co.uk
• Light rocker switch - part 43.409.U314.50
• Adaptor ring (black) - part 43.409.-018.80
• Rocker switch cover (black) - part 43.409.-008.80

The plan for the inside lighting was to move one of our badly corroded lights from the cabin, where it is seen and into our back cabin, which is mainly used for storage. We would also need to service quite a few of the lights, as quite a few of the rocker switches were broken. While Beverley would be working inside I would be outside moving our stern light as we had been told off because it simply was not visible.

Inside Lights

Beverley serviced quite a few of the inside lights, for this she had to take the old switch out, we found out that the switch was only made from plastic and quite a few of the plastic grips had broken. she eventually found the knack of how to do it and this is a case where the video explains it best, so please watch the video to see what you have to do. She also removed the chrome paint so that the light was at least uniform in colour. It is not as shiny as the ones that still have the chrome paint but seeing as we were moving it to the back cabin, it should be alright.

Once Beverley had serviced the lights, her next item on her list was to add a new light over the kitchen. this meant taking the roof panel down and adding the new light in parallel so that the two lights would work independently. Over the connections our heat shrink was too small, so she covered the connections with amalgamating tape before putting it all up. It really did make a difference to the amount of light in the kitchen, so good job.

Stern Light

While Beverley was working inside, I was outside moving our stern light. As we sling our dingy on the back, the stern light is obscured. So the first thing that I had to do was remove the light and for this the pointy nose pliers came to the rescue. I also found that there was a knack to removing the cover of the light.

My first idea on attaching our stern light to our solar panel arch was to use a rather nice bracket that I had bought. There were several problems with this, the main one was that I was using cheap drill bits and they were just not up to the job so they wandered around, so I had more of a gouge rather than a hole. In the end we bought new drill bits and re-drilled the bracket. The second issue was when I had it all in place, the bracket was just too big. In the end I used two P-clips onto a piece of sapele, this design had two great advantages, one it was simpler and two it worked. Once I had managed to get the light in place, it was just a case of cable tying the cable to the solar arch and then bringing the new wire into the boat. For this I simply used the old cable as the mousing line and pulled the new wire into the transom, where I simply crimped the end of the wire and attached the new cable to the wiring loom put in by Bavaria. I covered my connections with amalgamating tape, which does a great job.